Our Nation's Christmas Trees

One day, A. T. Dowd was hunting a grizzly bear when he came upon a gigantic tree. Being a lumberjack, he forgot about the bear and went to tell his friends. Since all told tall tales, they did not believe him. Therefore, he tricked them into helping him bring back a gigantic grizzly bear that he had “shot”. The grizzly bear was actually a sequoia tree of what is now Sequoia National park. If it were not for John Muir’s discovery of the Giant Forest in 1875, lumberjacks would have cut down the brittle trees for fences, stakes, shingles, or pencils. But the lumberjacks had already done damage. Besides cutting down and wasting resources, on half of each tree could be used, they also stripped a tree of its bark and sent the bark to New York. This left the tree to die slowly without its bark to protect it. Finally, in 1890, Sequoia became a national park. A week later Grant Grove was added to the property. Grant Grove was eventually turned into its own park named Kings Canyon in 19...